Ruth Marcus commentary: Obama looks caught in substitute teacher trap

6:17 PM,
May 3, 2013

Written by

Ruth Marcus

To be a good president requires the combined skills of chess master and middle-school teacher.

The chess master president possesses the ability to think several steps ahead. To take one recent example: asserting that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would cross a red line. "A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized," President Obama said in August. "That would change my equation. ? We have put together a range of contingency plans."

Great, and, in the best of all worlds, the threat - made privately and amplified publicly - might have ...